WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Republican lawmakers criticized the Biden administration on Friday after Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei unveiled a laptop with an Intel AI chip this week.
As part of a broader effort to limit Beijing’s technological advances, the United States put Huawei on its trade sanctions list in 2019 for violating sanctions against Iran. Inclusion on the list means that the company’s suppliers must obtain a special license, before supplying the company.
One such license, issued by the Trump administration, allows Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops starting in 2020. Hardliners in China have urged the Biden administration to revoke that license, but many have reluctantly acknowledged that it will eventually expire. year Jahr dies. This is not required.
Huawei is introducing its first AI laptop, the MateBook, on Thursday
“One of the biggest mysteries in Washington, DC, is why the Commerce Department is allowing Huawei to supply US technology,” Republican Congressman Michael Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, told Reuters in a statement.
A source familiar with the matter said the chips were shipped under a pre-existing license. Those restrictions were not included in recent sweeping restrictions on shipments of artificial intelligence chips to China, the source and another person said.
The Commerce Department and Intel declined to comment. Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The response is a sign of growing pressure on the Biden administration to do more to curb Huawei’s rise, nearly five years after placing it on the trade sanctions list.
In August, the country stunned the world with a new phone powered by an advanced chip from SMIC, a subsidiary of Chinese chipmaker that has become a symbol of China’s technological renaissance even as Washington continues to try to undermine its ability to make advanced semiconductors.
At a Senate subcommittee hearing this week, export control official Kevin Kurland said Washington’s sanctions on Huawei had a “significant impact” on its access to US technology. He also emphasized that the goal is not necessarily to prevent Huawei from growing, but rather to prevent it from misusing American technology for “malicious activities.”
But those comments did little to quell the frustration among China Republican hawks following news of Huawei’s new laptop.
“These sanctions must be stopped,” Republican Congressman Michael McCaul said in a statement to Reuters. “Two years ago I was informed that Huawei’s license would be terminated. Nothing seems to have changed in terms of politics today.”
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Karin Freefield; Editing by Leslie Adler and Stephen Coates)